Статьи

The study endeavors to examine the dynamics of movement, posture, and social interactions within cafés operating in the two neighboring countries during the 17th to 19th centuries. These establishments, which began their global spread in the 17th century, served as quintessential gathering places for men in Eastern societies, where various discussions took place amidst the accompaniment of ashough music and poetic recitations. They were venues where the intellectual and creative figures of the era – writers, musicians, and artists – regarded cafés as the ideal platform for self-expression, thus becoming the centres of contemporary performances, festivities, and multicultural exchanges. Due to the deepening cultural relations, artists from neighboring regions, such as Iran and Armenia, frequently performed in cafés across both countries, thereby fostering a reciprocal exchange of artistic expression. This is why many Armenian public figures of the time – musicians and writers enjoyed recognition in Iran and possessed knowledge of the Persian language. Similarly, a comparable environment was established in cafés operating within Armenia, where prominent Persian artists showcased their talents. Nevertheless, with hanging times and the evolving nature of artistic expression, cafés gradually lost their prestige as primary centers of entertainment. They transformed into more inclusive spaces frequented by the general public. Today, they continue to serve as venues for live music, book presentations, and lectures, retaining a legacy of cultural significance.

Молекулярные кристаллы халькогенидов обнаруживают широкий спектр изменений химических и физических свойств под действием света с энергией, превышающей ширину запрещенной зоны. Большинство этих свойств определяются электронной структурой. Однако по электронной структуре As4Se4 имеется лишь несколько теоретических статей по молекуле и всего только две - по кристаллу As4Se4. В настоящей работе впервые были сопоставлены геометрическая и электронная структура кристалла As4Se4 и молекулы As4Se4, рассчитанные в рамках периодической модели методом DFT в одних и тех же приближениях. При этом были рассчитаны равновесные длины связей и валентные углы вместе с разностными электронными плотностями, зарядами Малликена, Лёвдина и Бадера, а также Малликеновскими заселенностями перекрывания, и проведён сравнительный анализ характера химической связи в кристалле As4Se4 и молекуле As4Se4. Выполненные DFT расчеты зонной структуры показали, что кристалл As4Se4 является непрямозонным полупроводником.

In June 2022, the publishing house of Saint Petersburg State University published the monograph Communicative Adaptation in Dialogue: A phonetician’s point of view (Kachkovskaya 2022), the fruit of many years of work by a team of authors who are teachers, students and graduates of the Department of Phonetics and Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages. The book explores the manifestations of intra-speaker speech variability as a result of the adaptation of interlocutors to each other in the course of the process of communication. This is the first comprehensive study of the phonetic side of communicative adaptation based on Russian material that determines the relevance and innovative perspective of this work and its unconditional theoretical value. The subtitle of the publication (‘a phonetician’s point of view’) is of note and is able to arouse the interest of a prospective reader.

Area Studies - междисциплинарные региональные и страновые исследования - в последние десятилетия являются объектом критики со стороны «мейнстрима» общественных наук. Специалисты по отдельным регионам и странам воспринимаются как в недостаточной степени владеющие современной исследовательской методологией и в большей степени ориентирующиеся на интересы гуманитарных, а не общественных дисциплин. В то же время изучение отдельных регионов и стран требует накопления специфического знания, которое с высокой вероятностью будет утеряно в отсутствие сообществ Area Studies. В статье рассматриваются основные направления критики Area Studies и существующие предложения по модернизации этого исследовательского направления. Критика Area Studies может быть связана с тремя проблемами: чрезмерным доминированием гуманитарных наук в большинстве сообществ Area Studies, недостаточным учетом современных теоретических и эмпирических подходов и скрытой нормативностью, то есть подменой научного анализа ценностными утверждениями. Модернизация Area Studies как научного направления связана с применением альтернативных подходов к региональным и страновым исследованиям в рамках трех исследовательских проектов: сравнительных Area Studies (Comparative Area Studies, CAS), трансрегиональных исследованиях (Transregional Studies) и региональной специализации в рамках отдельных дисциплин.

Purpose. The research is purposed at substantiation of the design of floating marine stations with a wave energy generator. The proposed construction is of higher efficiency as compared to the known designs due to the application of roll oscillations and resonance operating mode.

Methods and Results. The resonance method of converting wave energy into electrical energy, as well as the design of an autonomous station based on the resonance conversion of the station hull roll oscillations into the electrical energy are described. The method implies adjusting the frequency of natural angular oscillations of the floating station hull to the significant wave frequency. It has been theoretically proved that the conversion of roll oscillations energy is more effective than the conversion of vertical oscillations. This is due to the fact that the amount of damping during vertical vibrations of a cylindrical body in water exceeds the amount of damping during angular oscillations of such a body. Besides, the proposed method is shown to be effective for applications in the development of measurement systems and storage devices. The design of a floating station is proposed for implementing the resonance method for converting wave energy. It is shown that adjusting the frequency of natural onboard oscillations of the station hull to the significant wave frequency can be done using the additional filled tanks. The algorithm for adjusting the hull roll oscillations to the resonance with significant wave frequency is described. The kinematic scheme for a mechanical converter of roll energy into electrical one is proposed.

Conclusions. The results of theoretical studies were validated experimentally using the device test model in a wave experimental basin. They show that the hydrodynamic efficiency of the proposed wave converter increases as the wave heights decrease.

In this study, two examples of physical experiment automation using computer vision and deep learning techniques are considered. The first of them involves the use of classical computer vision techniques to detect and track the oblique shock wave on the experimental shadowgraph images. This was achieved using Canny edge detection and Hough transform, which allowed to obtain the line equation corresponding to the oblique shock wave. By automatically calculating the angle of this wave for each frame in the video, the process of extracting quantitative information from flow visualizations was significantly accelerated. In the second example, a convolutional neural network was trained to identify four classes of objects on the shadowgraph images, namely vertical shock waves, bow shocks, plumes, and opaque particles in the flow. The custom object detection model is based on the up-todate YOLOv8 architecture. To realize this task, a dataset of 1493 labeled shadowgraph images was collected. The model showed excellent performance during the learning process, with model precision and mAP50 scores exceeding 0.9. It was successfully applied to detect objects on the shadowgraph images, demonstrating the potential of deep learning techniques for automating the processing of flow visualizations. Overall, this study highlights the significant benefits of combining classical computer vision algorithms with deep learning techniques in the automation of physical experiments. However, classical algorithms demand the writing additional code to extract the required information. The deep neural networks can perform this task automatically, provided that a well-annotated dataset is available. This approach offers a promising avenue for accelerating the analysis of flow visualizations and the extraction of quantitative information in physical experiments.

A recurrent formula for estimating an impedance of the cathode catalyst layer with fast oxygen transport in a polymer electrolyte fuel cell is derived. The catalyst layer is divided into N sub-layers and application of the charge conservation law enables to obtain the nonlinear recurrent relation Zn = f(Zn-1), where Zn is the accumulated impedance of all sub-layers up to the n-th one. Numerical solution of this relation gives the total impedance of the catalyst layer with taking into account variation of the static overpotential of the oxygen reduction reaction along the depth of this layer. The model is simple, robust and two orders of magnitude faster than the standard model based on numerical solution of the differential equation.

The study examined animal-based metaphors in Igbo with a focus on their cultural and contextual meanings and interpretations. It adopted the pragmatic methodological approach involving interviews with 20 participants drawn from various Igbo culture areas to collect animal-based metaphors as well as their meanings and interpretations. Introspection also featured in data collection as the authors are native speakers of Igbo. The study revealed that animal-based metaphors are used to describe human personality, conduct or behavior. This is essentially by the process of associating some features or attributes of the animals with human conduct and personality. The study further identified that some metaphors could be used in dual metaphorical sense, i.e., derogatory/negative, and commendatory/ positive, and these depend on the cultural connotations as well as contextual meanings and interpretations of the referents. The study concludes that animalbased metaphors in the Igbo language and culture reflect and represent the description of a person, conduct or behavior, as well as beliefs and realities among the Igbo.

Впервые приводятся сведения о нахождении вида Astragalus teskhemicus в центральной и северо-западной части Монголии, ранее считавшегося эндемиком песков Цугер-Элс на юге Республики Тыва. Установлено, что A. teskhemicus встречается в составе псаммофитных сообществ - чабрецовых и полынных.

A new feather mite species, Dolichodectes sibiricus sp. n. (Pterodectinae), is described from the Dark-sided Flycatcher, Muscicapa sibirica Gmelin, JF, captured on the southern coast of Lake Baikal, Buryatia, Russia. The new species is closest to D. allocaulus (Gaud and Mouchet 1957) and D. platynocercus (Gaud and Mouchet, 1957) from Africa and is distinguished from them in the following features. In males of D. sibiricus, the lateral enlargements of opisthosomal lobes are of a complicated form and consist of distinct angular projections bearing setae f2 and rounded ledges at level of setae h2, and the aedeagus extends to the level of setae ps3; in females, the prodorsal and hysteronotal shields lack ornamentation, the terminal appendages at their bases are 2–2.5 times thicker that setae h2, and setae e2 are situated closer to the level of setae e1 than to the posterior margin of the hysteronotal shield. Brief comments on the systematics of the genus Dolichodectes, a key to the known species, an updated checklist of the world fauna, as well as host associations are provided.

The paper describes a new species, Trouessartia cyane sp. n., collected from the Siberian Blue Robin Larvivora cyane (Pallas) (type host) and the Rufous-tailed Robin L. sibilans Swinhoe in Primorsky Krai (the Russian Far East). The description is supplemented with barcoding data (mitochondrial cytochrome C oxidase subunit I gene).

Trouessartia cyane is closest to T. larvivorae Mironov, 2021 and T. rubecula Jablonska, 1968, differing mainly in measurable characteristics. In particular, in males of T. cyane, the length of terminal lamellae is 20–23 (vs. 25–30 in T. larvivorae and 30–35 in T. rubecula); in females, the length of idiosoma is 515–545 (vs. 555–590 in T. larvivorae and 570–625 in T. rubecula), the distance between setae se is 85–90 (vs. 100–120), the width of opisthosoma at the level of setae h2 is 87–97 (vs. 105–115), setae h1 are thin spiculiform (vs. lanceolate).

Genetic distances within T. cyane, as well as between the new species and four closely related Trouessartia species from four muscicapids distributed in northern Eurasia, have been analyzed using Kimura’s two-parameter (K2P) model. Intraspecific genetic distances within T. cyane varied between 0.006 and 0.01; interspecific distances between the new species and morphologically
close species ranged from 0.154 (T. rubecula) to 0.185 (T. calliope).

Phoretic deutonymphs of Winterschmidtia tawantinsuyuca sp. n. (Acari: Winterschmidtiidae) are described from Peru. This is the fourth species of the genus recorded in the Neotropical realm. Similar to the three other Peruvian species, the new species is phoretic on bark beetles, but this is the first finding of Winterschmidtia on the beetles of the genus Xyleborus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae). The new species differs from all others in the ornamentation on of its prodorsal shield.